…Journal of our Experiences with Social Media and Virtual Worlds to date…

All kinds of Chickens in Virtual Worlds

There is an extraordinary group of musicians in South Africa, called Freshlyground and today they release the official online video of their brilliant song ‘Chicken to Change’ to inspire the President of Zimbabwe to change his ways:

The sliding economy of Zimbabwe and lack of regard for ordinary citizens and their economic freedoms is serious business in this African country – affecting the image of the continent. We found ourselves thinking about Second Life and the way in which its leaders (too) disregard citizens and their efforts to date. Now look, here is a recent example with Linden Lab entering the virtual pet industry and partnering with Ozimals to provide breedable pets – bunnies! I first saw a reference to this via Twitter, when Phaylen Fairchild posted about the collaboration and commented on it extensively and critically. Daniel Voyager also wrote about the deal to get more bunnies out there in the virtual lands of Second Life’s uninhabited fields.

Now don’t get me wrong – I am all for supporting artificial wild life in virtual worlds (no pun intended). From our side, we sure would have liked Linden Lab to acknowledge our own meerkat that roams Virtual Africa, developed on request by SL Inworld Productions three years ago when we could not find animated animals and few others were thinking of such clever virtual pets on the Second Life platform. We would have given our front teeth (or theirs!) if residents could log in and get spammed with an offer to adopt a meerkat, name it, send it away to climb acacia trees, dig holes for food or sleep to feel better. Since 2008, our meerkats have been doing just that and survived various SL updates without being re-scripted ;) They are no breeding bunnies (and this post is NOT one to sulk about LL choosing ‘breedable” pets and not an once-off meerkat experiment, because the virtual pet business is not ours), but I have to say the meerkat sure have character, as this videoclip from LifeFactory Writer shows:

In fact, there are many very talented creature creators in virtual worlds – and certainly more animated ones outside of Second Life in the wonderful world of gaming. (Let me not even go there now). We wonder what the impact will be on this latest collaboration and if it is any indicator of where Linden Lab is heading. Should we read anything into the alignment with breeding bunnies at the exclusion of other more advanced species? Prokovy Neva sticks to his chickens from sion and we will stick to our meerkats and support many wild life creators on the grid. Our policy at Virtual Africa has always been: “If it is the best of its kind, we will showcase it there in the savannah“… so, indeed, we may have to try out these bunnies if offered :p Also, consider this an open invitation to come and display and sell your animals at Virtual Africa free of charge (Terms and Conditions do apply). Contact us via email: a.recreant@gmail.com or tweet us @VirtualAfrica.

Phaylen Fairchild questions how arts could be passed over for bunnies and reflects on a few other decisions by Linden Lab to withdraw support to prominent initiatives, and a professional pet developer (withholding his/her name) replies poignantly:

I was sincerely disappointed in LL’s decision to get behind Ozimals and support them solely, although there are about 20 of us developers of breedables now…

This is the crux of the matter – a deep lack of understanding (or conflict of interest) between creating an enabling environment for virtual enterprise (and making your money from doing this well enough) or running a competing virtual enterprise. In a tough economy, Linden Lab may have opted for the latter – to compete with its residents and content creators.This narrow-minded vision may very well be one of the reasons why co-founder Philip Rosedale … well, was chicken (?) and left the chicken coop – something we all still need to digest after being told not so long ago how Second Life will tackle the future and go ‘back to basics’, and how it will continue to grow… umm, breed? Or maybe, he was simply NOT chicken to change and has moved on when the bunnies came out to play with …. (what next?). Maybe Lindens should pass out bunnies instead of bears now?

In the mean time, you are always welcome in our virtual township in Virtual Africa, where we have replicated a small food garden complete with free range chickens – these are a popular food source in African communities. With food security such important topic world wide, we should all start to think about multipliers – and not only in the virtual worlds ;)

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2 thoughts on “All kinds of Chickens in Virtual Worlds”

“In a tough economy, Linden Lab may have opted for the latter – to compete with its residents and content creators.”

You know, they COULD HAVE promoted a page FULL of breedable animal creators, or a region with demos… a breedables Expo… may fair and balanced alternatives here.

But the reason I wrote SL off as an inappropriate environment for business is because I found you could not make business plans and have it succeed or fail based on your business or marketing skill; instead Linden Lab would regularly take some action that interferes with that business plan in a non-obvious way that I could not plan for. This is yet another example of LL interference in the in-world attempts by creators to fashion a successful business plan.